A substantial number of my clients find partners who take command and use their power in the relationship to make my clients feel small by ordering them around, criticizing them, belittling them, and acting as mind readers by saying things like “you needn’t speak because I know exactly what you’re going to say.” Living with a top-dog partner like this makes my clients feel unfree and deprived of the safe space they need to explore their thoughts and feelings, change, grow, and evolve as persons.
My questions for each of these clients is “why do you stay in the relationship?” or “what holds you back from finding a partner who will support your growth and development?” It’s hard to imagine that any rational person would consciously, deliberately choose to be bullied and oppressed. Even Marine bootcamp has a pay off in the sense that the Marines will pay for your education later on.
More often than not the clients who enter and remain in this kind of relationship grew up in a home where one parent openly bullied and oppressed the other or where at least one parent, regardless of gender, acted this way to the client as a child. I have heard many stories from clients about one parent harshly criticize them, call them ugly names or slap them across the face, while the other parent passively condoned it by looking away or conveniently leaving the room.
Being treated like creates a lifelong sense of familiarity with it. It represents the known, whereas kindness, compassion, encouragement, and support feel alien and frightening. Being treated like this can even create the distorted belief that “I don’t deserve to be treated well.
There are many different ways to approach a client this in hopes of waking them up and liberating them. I have developed a simple exercise to increase self-awareness. It involves asking the client to make a list of his core values, core needs in a relationship, and the boundary lines he does not his partner to cross. Taking answers from many clients and turning them into a composite answer would produce something like this.
“I want to be loved, respected, and openly appreciated in an equal partnership where each member seeks the well-being and growth of the other. I want my partner to allow me to speak and express myself without rushing to shut me down and tell me I’m stupid or wrong. I want a partner who is fun-loving and likes to laugh. I don’t want a partner is angry, controlling, and frequently critical of me.”
These are very simple, understandable, and reasonable terms for a relationship. If every client of mine had such a relationship I wouldn’t have any clients and would have to find a new line of work.
Increasing your client’s awareness of the ways in which and the extent to which his values, needs, and boundaries are being ignored or violated is part of the treatment. Using psychoeducation, CBT, and trauma therapy to help him feel that he deserves better and is entitled to better is equally important. The client then has the opportunity to assert his authentic voice in the relationship and try to change it or leave the relationship to find a healthier, happier one.
